Confession

This weekend we "Reclaim Our Stories," and so I share a story with you.

Two years ago, a group of us were trying to revive the PRIDE multi-faith service after a major organizer of the event left town. As we began to plan the service, we each offered elements that we felt the service should have. One woman, a good friend of mine and a wonderful, committed, straight ally of the GLBT community, offered, "We should have a confession." Of course, I thought, a worship service should have a confession, a recognition that none of us live wholly loving lives that reflect the true nature of the God we worship...a recognition that we fail and we are forgiven. But maybe not this particular worship service.

I began talking with my friend about the experience many of us who are GLBT and Christian have had when it comes to confession. I explained how so many of us have been assaulted by those who believe our sexuality and gender expression are an affront to God, and how often we're urged to "confess" what is most certainly not a sin. I shared that many GLBT people I've met are so fragile in their self-esteem or, at the other extreme, so determined to celebrate their sexuality and God's affirmation, that confessions might need mountains of accompanying education to ensure that they could be embraced and understood for their true meaning and value. I told my friend that I wasn't sure we could pull off a confession in a service that was so multi-faceted and hoped to reach such a diverse swath of the GLBT community.

We didn't, that first year, but then last year we introduced a confession that acknowledged our need to provide better stewardship to our earth, air, and water. It felt like an honest, careful way to offer a corporate confession. That brings me to our worship together here at MCC Austin and the question I was asked this week: Why don't we have a confession before communion? I thought there might be many of you wondering the same thing, so here I am doing my best to answer this big question in this little space.

The first thing I want to share is that most often, we do include a confession (generally in the form of a Prayer of Confession) in our communion service. We have the advantage--through the course of living in community and worshipping and learning together regularly--of placing the confession within the context of God's faithful forgiveness. Always, when confession is part of our liturgy, it is followed by an assurance of God's pardon and grace...of God's love!

Right now, though, you will not find a Prayer of Confession as part of our communion liturgy. This is not because we no longer feel the need to bring our complete selves before God or because we've decided to ignore the 1st Corinthian teaching that we examine our hearts before taking communion; it's simply a process matter. For several series now, we've been using one worship bulletin for the entire series. This is a response to our desire to be better stewards of natural resources and to cherish the earth. During the Advent and "Love Letters from God" series, we included a prayer of confession in the worship bulletin. However, the repetition of the same prayer each week prevented the kind of variety and the personal "stamp" of the communion Celebrant that we so cherish.

For those reasons and others, we decided to leave a printed confession out of the bulletin for the Lenten series. For those of you who feel that you can't come to communion without a confession, let me offer you some possibilities.

First, you can always offer your own confession. It can be simple and personal, along the lines of "God, I know I'm far from perfect. Forgive me when I fail." You might use the words of a familiar song, hymn, or scripture; something like "Change my heart, oh God/Make it ever true," or "Create in me a clean heart, oh God/And renew a right spirit within me." If your soul craves the liturgy of other traditions, you might confess "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed." And for those of you who need the pastor's assurance that God will forgive, does forgive, has already forgiven, believe this: When we confess our failings, God who is faithful and just forgives us wholly, totally, perfectly. That is very good news.

Always in Hope...